Gina Volynsky

Gina Volynsky has nearly 30 years of experience in international development, including 14 years of living and working in low- and middle-income countries. She dedicated much of her career to inclusive economic development and collaborating with the private sector, governments and civil society to address development challenges. Gina is currently at Pact, building the Private Sector Engagement practice. For USAID, she headed a team working on private sector engagement, and has served twice as Chief of Party. While at UNDP’s Center for Eurasia she oversaw a 27 country portfolio and designed and managed programs with companies and foundations and strengthened the capacity of governments to promote inclusive economic development, trade and investment. She served as Country Manager for the World Bank’s, MIGA which provides political risk insurance to companies that invest in emerging economies. Gina set up and managed business development divisions for Crown Agents and CARANA. Also, she established and ran her own import-export company, and served as Director of Marketing for a US-based financial services company. Most recently she led the State University of New York’s Center for International Development, where in addition to overseeing and growing a large portfolio of programs, she co-created the International Development Concentration and designed and taught graduate courses. Gina was born in Moscow, Russia to a family of refuseniks who made aliya to Israel in 1972, and later to Canada in the 1980s. She has an MBA, a BA in Economics, is fluent in Hebrew and Russian, and has a basic command of French and Italian.